contingency into a novel.^4 Sartre had been working on the second version
of his “factum” while in Berlin, balancing his morning study of Husserl’s
Ideas Iwith reflections on contingency later in the day. Commentators
differ as to whether the relation between Husserlian phenomenology and
the novel is one of “influence” or rather “convergence” in the sense that
both contribute to Sartre’s plan to articulate the metaphysical experience
of contingency. Those in favor of the convergence hypothesis cite the fact
that Sartre’s “factum” on contingency predates his famous encounter
with Aron in the cafe ́that supposedly introduced him to phenomenology.^5
In any case, the seepage of the former into the latter is obvious in his
precise and arresting “phenomenological descriptions” throughout the
novel, his attention to consciousness as “in-the-world,” and the like.
Recall Sartre’s remark in his appeal to the principle of intentionality that
we are now delivered from the interior life, that we are “freed from
Proust.”^6 Contat and Rybalka point this out quite well:
That there may however have been a certainosmosisbetween the philosophical work
and the novel, that the latter benefitted from the discovery of phenomenology,
notably by the acquisition of a more precise philosophical formulation is beyond
doubt in view of the final text:Nauseais clearly a phenomenological novel. It is so by
virtue of the status of the consciousness that it establishes in the person of Roquen-
tin; by the dissolution of the subject that it effects; by its refusal of psychology:
Roquentin has no “character,” no substantial ego; he is pure consciousnessofthe
world; his experience is not a voyage into the depths of interiority; on the contrary, it
is a bursting out toward things [in the manner of Sartre’s essay on Husserl’s
“intentionality”]. Everything is outside: Nausea is notinRoquentin; he’s the one
who is dissolved in it.
(OR 1664 )
(^4) See MS cited inSartre, ed. Mauricette Berne (Paris: BNF/Gallimard, 2005 ), 42.
(^5) This is the argument of Vincent de Coorebyter in his masterfulSartre face a`la Phe ́nome ́n-
ologie(SFP 142 ). He quotes Contat and Rybalka in support:
As we know, Sartre worked on the second version of his book in addition to reading
Husserl’sIdeen zu einer reinen Pha ̈nomenologiein 1933 – 1934 , while on a fellowship at the
French Institute in Berlin. It is difficult to determine the contribution of this study to
Nausea, given that we do not have the earlier version of the text. Sartre himself has
assured us that it was not decisive, that his attention to “the things themselves” [Husserl’s
motto] preceded his contact with Husserlian phenomenology.
6 (OR 1664)
See above,Chapter 3. Yet it seems that Sartre had not “freed” himself from Proust so fully.
Contat and Rybalka note that “the Proustian work [Recherche du temps perdu] is probably the
most profound influence that one can detect inNausea”(OR 1665 ).
138 The necessity of contingency:Nausea